The claim that the entire coterie of Hindu communalist organisations is "fascist" - a claim not made with that same confidence prior to the tragedy at Ayodhya, and today often asserted rather than argued - has been challenged from the Left by Achin Vanaik.
While agreeing that the Hindu Right has certain fascist characteristics", locating himself in a classical Marxist tradition of analysing and combating fascism which includes figures such as Leon Trotsky and Ernest Mandel, rejected fascism's "spatial extension to backward, dependent capitalist countries."
Aijaz Ahmad has challenged this with the observation that "every country gets the fascism it deserves, i.e., the historical form of fascism always shifts according to 26 International Viewpoint #301 the historical, economic, political, social, even religious and racial physiognomy of a given country, and it is useless to always seek an approximation with the German experience. A mass fascistic movement
This is the background to Kunal Chattopadhyay's intervention in the debate, with this analysis of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). A lecturer in History at Calcutta's Jadavpur University, Chattopadhyay reveals the "fascist affinities" of the RSS through a textual analysis.
The RSS is a mass movement with millions of members, dozens of 'front' or affiliated organisations entrenched in civil society. Its daily activities include morning physical exercises, 'Indian' sports and politico-religious classes.
In the wake of natural disasters, train and plane accidents and in refugee camps, its members turn up dispensing food and medicine and doing relief work.
The stakes in this debate have always been high and are now raised even higher by the election to government, of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political vehicle of Hindu communalism.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani began their political careers in the RSS and have never concealed their past and present ties to the organisation.
The influence of the RSS over the new government was demonstrated recently when the BJP's nominee for the important Finance portfolio, Jaswant Singh was overruled by the RSS in favour of Yashwant Sinha - not one of their members but clearly
Immediately charges were raised that the RSS was "remote-controlling" the government from outside. Nothing of the sort, the RSS protested. There was no necessity for the RSS to do such things said one of their leaders, revealing more than he may have intended. "After all," he boasted, they [the BJP] are all seasoned RSS workers.
The strong popular attachment to bourgeois democracy in India (despite all its shortcomings) obliges the RSS to take a careful public position. Since the Second World War, few organisations anywhere have attained mass dimensions in the post-World War Il era, while proclaiming their adherence to classic fascism. But if we turn to the early history and ideology of the RSS, its fascist affinities emerge clearly. Kunal Chattopadhyay
Classic fascism was not a simple agent of monopoly capitalism. It preserved the rule of capital but in its own way, at the cost of politically expropriating the bourgeoisie, and harnessing the petty bourgeoisie in a mass movement that was apparently based on a supra-class nationalism.
The mass movement was tightly controlled by a centralised and authoritarian organisation. Throughout the period of its rise to power, both in Italy and in Germany, the fascist movement maintained its independence from the traditional rightwing parties, and in both cases took power in a coalition but proceeded to liquidate the traditional right-wing partners. Cultural nationalism
The RSS claims to be a cultural, rather than a political organisation. But its cultural project, from formal education in RSS run schools, to sports and other cultural activities, is deeply political. Absolute loyalty to the organisation, denial of any critical thinking, submission of self to "superiors, and submergence into community, are ways of creating a fascist cadre
The key text to understanding the formation of the RSS as a fascist force is M. S. Golwalkar's We or Our Nationhood Defined. Four editions were printed between 1939 and 1947, at a time when communalists of both hues were working up to a fever pitch for their war against the 'other community' and against all democratic and human norms.
Even the Holocaust did not dampen Golwalkar's ardour for the Nazis. It was only after an ex-RSS member Nathuram Godse murdered independence leader "Mahatma' Gandhi, and the organisation was banned, that Golwalkar adopted a strategy of doublespeak - one discourse for the initiated, another for the public.
He developed and stressed the concept of cultural nationalism, rather than territorial nationalism. Not all who lived in India were truly Indians. The totalitarian implications were proudly flaunted, with reference to history's most genocidal political
"German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture.
Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic races - the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by" (p.27).
[An earlier far-right theorist] G. D Savarkar had insisted that the patriotism of Indian Muslims and Christians is always inferior and doubtful, because they could not identify their pitribhumi (father land) with punyabhumi (holy land). Golwalkar carried the argument to its logical conAn exclusively Hindu India
In We or Our Nationhood Defined, he wrote: "From this standpoint sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu nation.
They must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ingratitude towards this land and its age-long traditions, but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion instead. In one word, they must cease to be foreigners. Or, they may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, not even citizen's rights" (p.52).
This is the cornerstone of cultural nationalism. The "unity in diversity" mentioned by Hindutva ideologues is hollow. After claiming that Hinduism's "catholicity' (broadness) is an element of its superiority to Christianity, Islam or Communism, Golwalkar calls for rigidity, to homogenise Hindus. The test of patriotism that he puts forward is acceptance of the "religion of the soil."
In another book, Bunch of Thoughts, Golwalkar attacked Democracy and Communism as false theories. Democracy gives political equality, creates the desire for social equality, and fuels Communist propaganda. In competing electorally with Communists, the Congress party also makes populist promises, strengthening the Communist case. "A faith to live by and die for"
According to Golwalkar, the alternative is the dictatorship of a party that would (claim to) stand above classes and class conflicts in the name of morality. Of course as we know this would continue to ensure capital accumulation but that function would be masked by the stress on building a "faith to live by and die for", and the struggle against Communism.
In his Introduction to that book, Professor M. A. Venkat Rao writes, "Another advantage of the Indian (sic) view of society is that it eschews class war. It postulates social harmony as a potentiality, if not as a fully actual order of laws and customs, observances and enforcement's. Nor is it an exploiting agency. It is an agency of morality or dharna."
Anti-Communism, hostility to democracy, hostility to the struggle of the working class, were crucial issues to RSS. Far from being the enemy of the British colonialists, Golwalkar wrote, in his Bunch of Thoughts, "Being anti-British was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the independence struggle, its leaders and the common people." Not surprisingly, the RSS was never a target for British repression, throughout the 1940's and up to independence.
After ex-RSS member Nathuram Godse murdered Gandhi, the RSS was banned. At this point, Golwalkar turned to anti-British nationalists, arguing that they and the RSS had a common interest in beating back Communists. The Communist and democratic threat
Like Hitler, Golwalkar realised that mere use of state power was inadequate to crush the working class movement.
Hitler believed that this task could be fulfilled by mobilising the middle class as a battering ram against the proletariat. "The class of the middle only manifests (itself) perceptibly when the two extremes are locked in mutual struggle" (Mein Kampf, p. 520). The so-called "red terror' could only be crushed when a mass social movement from below emerged, with the proclaimed goal of destroying Marxism.
Golwalkar too fulminated against the twin evils of Democracy and Communism. He wrote to India's post-independence leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, arguing that governmental power and RSS cultural force must be combined to eliminate the Communist menace. And the first RSS front organisation to be founded was their trade union, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS).
[The party already had a women's organisation, Rastrasevika Samiti, but this was defined as the women's branch of the RSS rather than a front group.]
Like the Nazi NSBO trade union organisation, the goal of the BMS was to preach rejection of communist ideas of class struggle. According to Somendra Kumar, a veteran UTUC trade unionist from Bihar, "the BMS tried to replace the class and internationalist outlook by sectarianism, through the propagation of Viswakarma Puja (a religious rite) in place of May Day." Follow the leader
The RSS is a thoroughly undemocratic body. In 1929, the principle of ek chalak anuvartita (following one leader) was adopted, and RSS founder Hedgewar was chosen as organisational supremo for life. So has each of his successors: Golwalkar, Deoras, and the incumbent Rajendra Singh.
The sarsanghchalak (Supreme Leader) gives an annual address disclosing the tasks for the year, and this is implemented faithfully by the shakhas (neighbourhood units).
In 1949, under government pressure, a written constitution was adopted, and elections were introduced for local and provincial sanghchalaks (leaders). But this is a formality. The key local and provincial post is the pracharak (full time cadre) who is appointed and tightly controlled from Fascist origins, fascist ic practice
Our insistence on the fascist origins of the RSS is not historicism. The recent history of the RSS and its affiliates corresponds fully to what we have shown about their origins. L. K. Advani's infamous rath-yatra (chariot-tour) resulted in 43 riots. This was not accidental. nationalism" , (actually a fascist Hindu communal identity) had to be mobilised at a high pitch. And these programmes consolidated the Hindu identity. I remember some of my own students beginning to make crypto-BJP noises for the first time in the aftermath of the Bombay and Surat communal riots.
The "cultural nationalist" propaganda of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) strips Muslims of all humanity. The vast and rich cultural traditions of Indian Islam are flatly ignored to suggest that Muslims only have the aim of
The ideology of swadeshi (economic nationalism) should be viewed in proper perspective. It was and is an ideology and emphasises the need for cross class unity. The euphemism called economic liberalisation, which has led the working class in numerous countries into utter crises, has been progressing relatively slowly in India, and the mainstream press is quite explicit in blaming trade unionism for this.
Destroying the powers of the unions within the current political framework is impossible. This is why the BJP has been legitimised so much, even by sections of the media previously presenting a secular face. It is now constantly argued that the BJP government must tackle labour in a "proper" way — i.e. crush the Left.
The RSS is well aware that the present government is a coalition, and that the full RSS agenda cannot be implemented. But through the Home and Human Resource Development ministries, it wants to begin a major re-orientation, slowly building support from other bourgeois parties.
In India today, anti-communism, anti-labour policies, and support for economic liberalisation are combined in a systematic programme of a fascist nature. There is an urgent need to recognise this shift, and to wage a systematic battle against it. * In the diaspora, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in particular is very prominent running temple management committees. religious festivals (often sponsored by "multi-cultural" local government and funding bodies), and running summer schools and camps for diaspora youth who want to know about their "culture and roots. The excellent Bombay-produced magazine Communalism Combat! is packed with articles, ideas, arguments and resources to fight the politics of prejudice and hatred Contact: Javed Anand & Teesta Setalvad, PO Box 28253, Juhu Post Office, Bombay 400 049, India. Tel: 605 3927, Fax: 648 2288. E-mail <sabrang@ bom2.vsnl.net.in> Subscription rates (1 year): India Rs.100, SAARC US$15, Other Countries USS25
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